Uncollected Stories 2003 (16 page)

I
first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Steubenville, but
I'd only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been making
his irregular visits indefinitely. No one much wanted to talk about Mr.
Legere, not even that last night when it seemed that the world was
coming to an end – the night that Mr. Indrasil disappeared.

But if I'm going to tell it to you from the beginning, I should start by
saying that I'm Eddie Johnston, and I was born and raised in Sauk City.
Went to school there, had my first girl there, and worked in Mr. Lillie's
five-and-dime there for a while after I graduated from high school. That
was a few years back...more than I like to count, sometimes. Not that
Sauk City's such a bad place; hot, lazy summer nights sitting on the
front porch is all right for some folks, but it just seemed to itch me, like
sitting in the same chair too long. So I quit the five-and-dime and joined
Farnum & Williams' All-American 3-Ring Circus and Side Show. I did
it in a moment of giddiness when the calliope music kind of fogged my
judgment, I guess.

So I became a roustabout, helping put up tents and take them down,
spreading sawdust, cleaning cages, and sometimes selling cotton candy
when the regular salesman had to go away and bark for Chips Bailey,
who had malaria and sometimes had to go someplace far away, and
holler. Mostly things that kids do for free passes – things I used to do
when I was a kid.

But times change. They don't seem to come around like they used to.
We swung through Illinois and Indiana that hot summer, and the crowds
were good and everyone was happy. Everyone except Mr. Indrasil. Mr.
Indrasil was never happy. He was the lion tamer, and he looked like old
pictures I've seen of Rudolph Valentino. He was tall, with handsome,
arrogant features and a shock of wild black hair. And strange, mad eyes
– the maddest eyes I've ever seen. He was silent most of the time; two
syllables from Mr. Indrasil was a sermon. All the circus people kept a
mental as well as a physical distance, because his rages were legend.
There was a whispered story about coffee spilled on his hands after a
particularly difficult performance and a murder that was almost done to
a young roustabout before Mr. Indrasil could be hauled off him. I don't
know about that. I do know that I grew to fear him worse than I had
cold-eyed Mr. Edmont, my high school principal, Mr. Lillie, or even my
father, who was capable of cold dressing-downs that would leave the
recipient quivering with shame and dismay.

When I cleaned the big cats' cages, they were always spotless. The
memory of the few times I had the vituperative wrath of Mr. Indrasil
called down on me still have the power to turn my knees watery in
retrospect.

Mostly it was his eyes – large and dark and totally blank. The eyes,
and the feeling that a man capable of controlling seven watchful cats in
a small cage must be part savage himself. And the only two things he
was afraid of were Mr. Legere and the circus's one tiger, a huge beast
called Green Terror.

As I said, I first saw Mr. Legere in Steubenville, and he was staring
into Green Terror's cage as if the tiger knew all the secrets of life and
death.

He was lean, dark, quiet. His deep, recessed eyes held an expression
of pain and brooding violence in their green-flecked depths, and his
hands were always crossed behind his back as he stared moodily in at
the tiger.

Green Terror was a beast to be stared at. He was a huge, beautiful
specimen with a flawless striped coat, emerald eyes, and heavy fangs
like ivory spikes. His roars usually filled the circus grounds – fierce,
angry, and utterly savage. He seemed to scream defiance and frustration
at the whole world.

Chips Bailey, who had been with Farnum &Williams since Lord knew
when, told me that Mr. Indrasil used to use Green Terror in his act, until
one night when the tiger leaped suddenly from its perch and almost
ripped his head from his shoulders before he could get out of the cage. I
noticed that Mr. Indrasil always wore, his hair long down the back of his
neck.
I can still remember the tableau that day in Steubenville. It was hot,
sweatingly hot, and we had a shirtsleeve crowd. That was why Mr.
Legere and Mr. Indrasil stood out. Mr. Legere, standing silently by the
tiger cage, was fully dressed in a suit and vest, his face unmarked by
perspiration. And Mr. Indrasil, clad in one of his beautiful silk shirts and
white whipcord breeches, was staring at them both, his face dead-white,
his eyes bulging in lunatic anger, hate, and fear. He was carrying a
currycomb and brush, and his hands were trembling as they clenched on
them spasmodically.

Suddenly he saw me, and his anger found vent. "You!" He shouted.
"Johnston!"
"Yes sir?" I felt a crawling in the pit of my stomach. I knew I
wasabout to have the wrath of Indrasil vented on me, and the thought
turned me weak with fear. I like to think I'm as brave as the next, and if
it had been anyone else, I think I would have been fully determined to
stand up for myself. But it wasn't anyone else. It was Mr. Indrasil, and
his eyes were mad.
"These cages, Johnston. Are they supposed to be clean?" He pointed a
finger, and I followed it. I saw four errant wisps of straw and an
incriminating puddle of hose water in the far corner of one.
"Y-yes, sir," I said, and what was intended to be firmness became
palsied bravado.
Silence, like the electric pause before a downpour. People were
beginning to look, and I was dimly aware that Mr. Legere was staring at
us with his bottomless eyes.
"Yes, sir?" Mr. Indrasil thundered suddenly. "Yes, sir?
Yes, sir?
Don't
insult my intelligence, boy! Don't you think I can see? Smell? Did you
use the disinfectant?''
"I used disinfectant, yes – "
"Don't answer me back!"
he screeched, and then the sudden drop in
his voice made my skin crawl. "Don't you dare answer me back."
Everyone was staring now. I wanted to retch, to die. "Now you get the
hell into that tool shed, and you get that disinfectant and swab out those
cages," he whispered, measuring every word. One hand suddenly shot
out, grasping my shoulder. "And don't you ever, ever, speak back to me
again."
I don't know where the words came from, but they were suddenly
there, spilling off my lips. "I didn't speak back to you, Mr. Indrasil, and
I don't like you saying I did. I – resent it. Now let me go."
His face went suddenly red, then white, then almost saffron with rage.
His eyes were blazing doorways to hell.
Right then I thought I was going to die.
He made an inarticulate gagging sound, and the grip on my shoulder
became excruciating. His right hand went up...up...up, and then
descended with unbelievable speed. If that hand had connected with my
face, it would have knocked me senseless at best. At worst, it would
have broken my neck.
It did not connect.
Another hand materialized magically out of space, right in front of
me. The two straining limbs came together with a flat smacking sound.
It was Mr. Legere.
"Leave the boy alone," he said emotionlessly.
Mr. Indrasil stared at him for a long second, and I think there was
nothing so unpleasant in the whole business as watching the fear of Mr.
Legere and the mad lust to hurt (or to kill!) mix in those terrible eyes.
Then he turned and stalked away.
I turned to look at Mr. Legere. "Thank you," I said.
"Don't thank me." And it wasn't a "don't thank me," but a "don't thank
me.'' Not a gesture of modesty but a literal command. In a sudden flash
of intuition empathy if you will I understood exactly what he meant by
that comment. I was a pawn in what must have been a long combat
between the two of them. I had been captured by Mr. Legere rather than
Mr. Indrasil. He had stopped the lion tamer not because he felt for me,
but because it gained him an advantage, however slight, in their private
war.
"What's your name?" I asked, not at all offended by what I had
inferred. He had, after all, been honest with me.
"Legere," he said briefly. He turned to go.
"Are you with a circus?" I asked, not wanting to let him go so easily.
"You seemed to know – him."
A faint smile touched his thin lips, and warmth kindled in his eyes for
a momen. "No. You might call me a – policeman." And before I could
reply, he had disappeared into the surging throng passing by.
The next day we picked up stakes and moved on.
I saw Mr. Legere again in Danville and, two weeks later, in Chicago.
In the time between I tried to avoid Mr. Indrasil as much as possible and
kept the cat cages spotlessly clean. On the day before we pulled out for
St. Louis, I asked Chips Bailey and Sally O'Hara, the red-headed wire
walker, if Mr. Legere and Mr. Indrasil knew each other. I was pretty
sure they did, because Mr. Legere was hardly following the circus to eat
our fabulous lime ice.
Sally and Chips looked at each other over their coffee cups. "No one
knows much about what's between those, two," she said. "But it's been
going on for a long time maybe twenty years. Ever since Mr. Indrasil
came over from Ringling Brothers, and maybe before that."
Chips nodded. "This Legere guy picks up the circus almost every year
when we swing through the Midwest and stays with us until we catch
the train for Florida in Little Rock. Makes old Leopard Man touchy as
one of his cats."
"He told me he was a police-man," I said. "What do you suppose he
looks for around here? You don't suppose Mr. Indrasil – ?"
Chips and Sally looked at each other strangely, and both just about
broke their backs getting up. "Got to see those weights and counter
weights get stored right," Sally said, and Chips muttered something not
too convincing about checking on the rear axle of his U-Haul.
And that's about the way any conversation concerning Mt. Indrasil or
Mr. Legere usually broke up – hurriedly, with many hard-forced
excuses.
We said farewell to Illinois and comfort at the same time. A killing hot
spell came on, seemingly at the very instant we crossed the border, and
it stayed with us for the next month and a half, as we moved slowly
across Missouri and into Kansas. Everyone grew short of temper,
including the animals. And that, of course, included the cats, which
were Mr. Indrasil's responsibility. He rode the roustabouts unmercifully,
and myself in particular. I grinned and tried to bear it, even though I had
my own case of prickly heat. You just don't argue with a crazy man, and
I'd pretty well decided that was what Mr. Indrasil was.
No one was getting any sleep, and that is the curse of all circus
performers. Loss of sleep slows up reflexes, and slow reflexes make for
danger. In Independence Sally O'Hara fell seventy-five feet into the
nylon netting and fractured her shoulder. Andrea Solienni, our bareback
rider, fell off one of her horses during rehearsal and was knocked
unconscious by a flying hoof. Chips Bailey suffered silently with the
fever that was always with him, his face a waxen mask, with cold
perspiration clustered at each temple.
And in many ways, Mr. Indrasil had the roughest row to hoe of all.
The cats were nervous and short-tempered, and every time he stepped
into the Demon Cat Cage, as it was billed, he took his life in his hands.
He was feeding the lions ordinate amounts of raw meat right before he
went on, something that lion tamers rarely do, contrary to popular
belief. His face grew drawn and haggard, and his eyes were wild.
Mr. Legere was almost always there, by Green Terror's cage, watching
him. And that, of course, added to Mr. Indrasil's load. The circus began
eyeing the silk-shirted figure nervously as he passed, and I knew they
were all thinking the same thing I was:
He's going to crack wide open,
and when he does –
When he did, God alone knew what would happen.
The hot spell went on, and temperatures were climbing well into the
nineties every day. It seemed as if the rain gods were mocking us. Every
town we left would receive the showers of blessing. Every town we
entered was hot, parched, sizzling. And one night, on the road between
Kansas City and Green Bluff, I saw something that upset me more than
anything else.
It was hot – abominably hot. It was no good even trying to sleep. I
rolled about on my cot like a man in a fever-delirium, chasing the
sandman but never quite catching him. Finally I got up, pulled on my
pants, and went outside.
We had pulled off into a small field and drawn into a circle. Myself
and two other roustabouts had unloaded the cats so they could catch
whatever breeze there might be. The cages were there now, painted dull
silver by the swollen Kansas moon, and a tall figure in white whipcord
breeches was standing by the biggest of them. Mr. Indrasil.
He was baiting Green Terror with a long, pointed pike. The big cat
was padding silently around the cage, trying to avoid the sharp tip.
And the frightening thing was, when the staff did punch into the tiger's
flesh, it did not roar in pain and anger as it should have. It maintained an
ominous silence, more terrifying to the person who knows cats than the
loudest of roars.
It had gotten to Mr. Indrasil, too. "Quiet bastard, aren't you?" He
grunted. Powerful arms flexed, and the iron shaft slid forward. Green
Terror flinched, and his eyes rolled horribly. But he did not make a
sound. "Yowl!" Mr. Indrasil hissed. "Go ahead and yowl, you monster
Yowl!" And he drove his spear deep into the tiger's flank.
Then I saw something odd. It seemed that a shadow moved in the
darkness under one of the far wagons, and the moonlight seemed to glint
on staring eyes – green eyes.
A cool wind passed silently through the clearing, lifting dust and
rumpling my hair.
Mr. Indrasil looked up, and there was a queer listening expression on
his face. Suddenly he dropped the bar, turned, and strode back to his
trailer.
I stared again at the far wagon, but the shadow was gone. Green
Terror stood motionlessly at the bars of his cage, staring at Mr. Indrasil's
trailer. And the thought came to me that it hated Mr. Indrasil not
because he was cruel or vicious, for the tiger respects these qualities in
its own animalistic way, but rather because he was a deviate from even
the tiger's savage norm. He was a rogue. That's the only way I can put it.
Mr. Indrasil was not only a human tiger, but a rogue tiger as well. The
thought jelled inside me, disquieting and a little scary. I went back
inside, but still I could not sleep.
The heat went on.
Every day we fried, every night we tossed and turned, sweating and
sleepless. Everyone was painted red with sunburn, and there were
fistfights over trifling affairs. Everyone was reaching the point of
explosion.
Mr. Legere remained with us, a silent watcher, emotionless on the
surface, but, I sensed, with deep-running currents of – what? Hate?
Fear? Vengeance? I could not place it. But he was potentially
dangerous, I was sure of that. Perhaps more so than Mr. Indrasil was, if
anyone ever lit his particular fuse.
He was at the circus at every performance, always dressed in his
nattily creased brown suit, despite the killing temperatures. He stood
silently by Green Terror's cage, seeming to commune deeply with the
tiger, who was always quiet when he was around.
From Kansas to Oklahoma, with no letup in the temperature. A day
without a heat prostration case was a rare day indeed. Crowds were
beginning to drop off; who wanted to sit under a stifling canvas tent
when there was an air-conditioned movie just around the block?
We were all as jumpy as cats, to coin a particularly applicable phrase.
And as we set down stakes in Wildwood Green, Oklahoma, I think we
all knew a climax of some sort was close at hand. And most of us knew
it would involve Mr. Indrasil. A bizarre occurrence had taken place just
prior to our first Wildwood performance. Mr. Indrasil had been in the
Demon Cat Cage, putting the ill-tempered lions through their paces.
One of them missed its balance on its pedestal, tottered and almost
regained it. Then, at that precise moment, Green Terror let out a terrible,
ear- splitting roar.
The lion fell, landed heavily, and suddenly launched itself with
riflebullet accuracy at Mr. Indrasil. With a frightened curse, he
heaved his chair at the cat's feet, tangling up the driving legs. He
darted out just as the lion smashed against the bars.
As he shakily collected himself preparatory to re-entering the cage,
Green Terror let out another roar – but this one monstrously like a huge,
disdainful chuckle.
Mr. Indrasil stared at the beast, white-faced, then turned and walked
away. He did not come out of his trailer all afternoon.
That afternoon wore on interminably. But as the temperature climbed,
we all began looking hopefully toward the west, where huge banks of
thunderclouds were forming.
"Rain, maybe," I told Chips, stopping by his barking platform in front
of the sideshow.
But he didn't respond to my hopeful grin. "Don't like it," he said. "No
wind. Too hot. Hail or tornadoes." His face grew grim. "It ain't no
picnic, ridin' out a tornado with a pack of crazy-wild animals all over
the place, Eddie. I've thanked God mor'n once when we've gone through
the tornado belt that we don't have no elephants.
"Yeah" he added gloomily, "you better hope them clouds stay right on
the horizon."
But they didn't. They moved slowly toward us, cyclopean pillars in the
sky, purple at the bases and awesome blue-black through the
cumulonimbus. All air movement ceased, and the heat lay on us like a
woolen winding-shroud. Every now and again, thunder would clear its
throat further west.
About four, Mr. Farnum himself, ringmaster and half-owner of the
circus, appeared and told us there would be no evening performance;
just batten down and find a convenient hole to crawl into in case of
trouble. There had been corkscrew funnels spotted in several places
between Wildwood and Oklahoma City, some within forty miles of us.
There was only a small crowd when the announcement came,
apathetically wandering through the sideshow exhibits or ogling the
animals. But Mr. Legere had not been present all day; the only person at
Green Terror's cage was a sweaty high-school boy with clutch of books.
When Mr. Farnum announced the U.S. Weather Bureau tornado
warning that had been issued, he hurried quickly away.
I and the other two roustabouts spent the rest of the-afternoon working
our tails off, securing tents, loading animals back into their wagons, and
making generally sure that everything was nailed down.
Finally only the cat cages were left, and there was a special
arrangement for those. Each cage had a special mesh "breezeway"
accordioned up against it, which, when extended completely, connected
with the Demon Cat Cage. When the smaller cages had to be moved, the
felines could be herded into the big cage while they were loaded up. The
big cage itself rolled on gigantic casters and could be muscled around to
a position where each cat could be let back into its original cage. It
sounds complicated, and it was, but it was just the only way.